


Ascent

by gardnerhill



Series: A Study In Crimson [7]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pirate, Drowning, Gen, Gift Fic, Pirate Sherlock, Pirates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-11
Updated: 2013-09-11
Packaged: 2017-12-26 07:00:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/962962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A lost hand won’t keep Dr. Jack from his duties aboard the <i>Baker</i> – but his negligence in obeying one of Captain Shear-Lock’s orders nearly costs him his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ascent

**Author's Note:**

  * For [capt_facepalm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/capt_facepalm/gifts).



> Watson’s Woes 2013 Winner prompt for [](http://capt-facepalm.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://capt-facepalm.livejournal.com/)**capt_facepalm** , who requested a story in my "Study in Crimson" pirate AU. Prompt can be found at the bottom.
> 
> This story takes place immediately before Chapter 4 of [Rache (A Study in Crimson, Book Two)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/462506).

"From the deck to the crow, Dr. Jack," Small said.

The _Baker_ was proceeding at a good clip on its way to Tobago, there to intercept the _Gloriana_ if at all possible. It was two bells of the forenoon watch in a steady warm rain. I stood with other members of the second watch at the base of the mainmast, gripping a ratline and looking up into the smacking, billowing sheets flinging more rain down upon us.

Shear-Lock was in his cabin, ostensibly off-watch and more likely studying his charts to map out our new course of dealing in vengeance rather than in plunder. Hopkins had the wheel, observing the off-duty Bakers at their lessons.

 “I shan’t be as fast as before, I’m afraid,” I said ruefully, bracing myself against the ship’s pitch in the rainstorm and gripping my ratline for dear life. Fear turned my guts to water within me – but damned if I was going to let it have a say.

“I’ll go first and then you,” the rigger said. “Reach the crow, shake hands with Black Rat, and back down. Easy as kiss-your-hand. Or kiss-your-saw.”

The crewmembers whooped at the joke.

"Goddamn agreed," I said, grinning like Tonga (though without that sailor’s startlingly-decorated teeth).

Coins and gems clinked hand to hand as the Bakers around us laid wagers – on whether I would reach the top or not, not whether a man who had my advantage both in length of use of his limb and in his accustomed duties would be faster than me, as that was a given. Wiggins dropped a fistful of silver ecu into Angel’s large brown hand – all his coin. I held my tongue, though my heart warmed at this gesture of loyalty from my dogsbody.

Once again I looked up at the lines that vanished high into the top of the mainmast, past the three sails. I recited them to myself: mainyard, topgallant yard, royal yard. And atop the royal, the crow’s-nest. Black Rat was up there now (he was John Turner only in the captain’s roster, just as I was One-Hand Jack or Dr. Jack to the crew – and only Cap’n Shear-Lock knew I had once been called John Watson).

I had not touched a line of rigging since my abduction, interrogation and amputation. But all hands save the captain took their turns at watch-duty in the crow’s-nest – rain or blow, day or night, one-legged or one-handed. I was a Baker – and since I was not the captain, up to the crow I must go.

The men whooped as Small began to climb his way up, using both hands and his good leg, almost hopping from rope to rope as he held his peg away from the rigging. I watched, and made note of as much as I could. "Small, you climb goddamn good!" Tonga shouted from where he clung atop the foreroyal yard, and added a string of what I could only speculate were equally profane comments in his native language, judging from Small's laugh and response in the same tongue.

With all of us whooping and cheering him on, Small reached the crow's nest in less than three minutes. In less than a minute he was back on the deck among us, sliding down a rope with his peg jutting out and grinning wide as his rigging-mate.

My turn. I reached up with my good hand and pulled off my wet shirt, tugging away the left sleeve that had been torn wider to accommodate my new “hand,” and handed it to Wiggins (who blessedly had not offered to assist).  The leather harness that bound the bonesaw hand to my truncated arm and which gave me so much control over it that I remained the ship's surgeon was buckled on over my shoulder, the solitary strap easily worked by my one hand; I unfastened the harness to remove my new "hand," shining silver steel and gold base set with five rubies, and handed it to my dogsbody for safekeeping; it was a valuable aid to a ship’s surgeon when performing amputations (or slashing the throat of an _Octavius_ dog), but would gash the sails and lines to pieces. Since I normally did not remove my new limb save when I slept off-watch, I felt more naked thus before the crew than I had when I had danced unclothed on the beach among them during our celebration. Wiggins finally did help me tug off my boots, a service unchanged from my multi-handed days.

I took hold of the first of the lines, and set my foot to the webbing that ran up to the top. I could do this; I had done this before losing my hand, in this very rigging. _Don’t look down, and don’t look up_ – Murray’s maxim to all new salts. I began my climb.

My shortened left arm ended just after the elbow, which gave me one way of hanging on by threading my arm through the lines and crooking my elbow hard. It was no substitute for my lost hand, but it also meant that I did not need to rely solely on my right hand for gripping. I was away from the deck, swaying and bumping in the rain along with the sheets, ascending one tarred line at a time.

The men’s encouraging shouts and calls I let fly around me as I did the wind and the rain, heeding them as little as possible.

Mainyard crosstree. I’d finally gotten the hang of both hanging on with my left elbow and getting the line around the arm as leverage whilst I reached with the right hand.

“Climb goddamn good Dr. Jack!” Tonga shouted, still hanging in the royal. I did not know whether my diminutive shipmate praised my efforts or exhorted me to follow his instructions.

The swaying of the ship was far more noticeable the higher up I climbed the mast, pitching and diving with each swell the _Baker_ rode. The rain hit my face like a shower of cold wet needles; I firmly reminded myself that this was a pleasant little spring shower compared to most of Tobago’s fierce seasonal storms, and kept climbing.

The t’gallant yard. I edged along to the next row of rigging and hoisted myself aloft once more. With every pull and drag I felt less like a maimed crewman and more like a Baker, scorning to let a little thing like a missing hand stop me from doing my duty. Indeed I was very close to belting out a hauling air (in truth it would have been more like ‘gasping out,’ as I was using most of my breath for the climb).

Everything ached. My left forearm was raw in a dozen places and bleeding in some of them from the ropes. _That’ll make a good callus when it’s done_ , I thought, and set my sore foot to the next line.

Don’t look up, don’t look down. But nothing could keep me from feeling the wild sway of the mast and lines this high. To the royal.

One sharp rock of the ship nearly dislodged me, my hand flying away – _Don’t kill me lass!_ – but my stump-arm was snug in the webbing, clinging for dear life. I seized the lines again – but I had looked down, and saw not deck but the sea. Heart beating like that of a tiny jeweled island bird, I clung to the lines, shaking.

 _Up, up, the enemy won’t wait for the fainting maiden to catch her breath before firing upon us!_ Up, again up, and grip the webbings like grim death. I set my teeth and pulled myself up through my own fear as if it was a mere fog wafting around my head, to be ignored.

The crow. And Turner leaning over grinning at me. “Aye, that’s done it, One-Hand!” He held out his own over the railing. “That whoreson couldn’t stop you!”

“It’ll be easier next time!” I shouted, exultant. Laughing, I kept my finger-grip on the lines and smacked my bleeding stump into Turner’s palm, the rain sheeting over both of us. I hooked my feet over a ratline and slung my right elbow around it, dropping myself by grips and starts down the rope.

Royal to t’gallant. T’gallant to main. Feet down, arms looped, fingers gripping. Slide, stop. Thud of the feet on the crosstree, a good solid hold. Reckless, I unhooked my stump-arm and reached for the mainyard line with my good hand at the same time – and that’s when the ship yawed and flung me like a raindrop from the sails.

I was in the air. The last thing I thought before I hit the water was _I still can’t swim_.

It was almost as hard as hitting the deck, and like falling into fire – the salt burned my mouth and nose and eyes. The sea swallowed me whole.

_Like this, Murray! Dr. Jack! Body like a boat, see? Arms like oars, and row!_

Hector’s lessons seemed a hundred miles away – and I’d had two good hands back then, and two stout inflated fish-bladders strapped to me to keep me afloat. Row? My body flailed, my lungs ached for air in the blackness, arms thrashing, my stupid little stump flailing like a wounded fish. I only seemed to be sinking faster for all my efforts.

Body like a boat, arms like oars. Up, up, my hand and my stumped arm had known how to pull me up on the lines. Grab the water like lines, pull, pull!

I seized at the water with my cupped hand, kicked at it as if reaching for a foothold. The sea squeezed my chest like the tentacles of the monster squids said to live out in the deep that ate whales whole, strangling me. Air – if I opened my mouth for a breath I would suck in the sea, and be dead.

Up, up, just for a breath – oh God I was expending everything just to move a few feet, how could anyone learn to navigate the self in this deadly element?

Light above me – lighter – the surface, oh sweet Jesus the surface – Water broke around my head in a blur of salty light; I shouted with pain as I drew in air and water both, coughed, choked, sank again. The treacherous beast squeezed my throat and pulled me down, flailing. I sank; I had nothing left, not after my climb to the crow, my hard landing into the sea, after expending everything just to get half a breath.

My head snapped up. Pain yanked at my scalp. Something had my hair. A shark, some monster fish, pulling me up head-first to swallow me.

Surface, again, and sweet air. The thing that had my hair held on for grim death, holding my head out of the water. Not a shark – sharks did not yell like a man with a Carib lilt to his roar. “Stay still, bastard dog!” A huge brown fist caught my thrashing arm.

I was moving. The hand in my hair and the hand gripping my arm were moving too, as was the great brown body beside me. And yet my face stayed above the water; I coughed more than I breathed, and when we reached the Baker and the sling was looped around my chest and under my arms to hoist me up, I leaned over and vomited sea water. And breathed, and kept breathing. I was in the air, rising, blinking at Angel who held on to his own rope as he was hoisted back up to rejoin our mates on the deck.

The deck, solid and firm under my bare torn feet and raw hand and forearms. I coughed now like a consumptive, and not like a drowning man. Hands pulled me upright, two or three men. Across the deck a dripping Angel untied the rope around his chest, dark eyes level and grim.

I awaited the jibes about my clumsiness, Angel’s castigation of me for necessitating the trouble of rescue, Wiggins angry at losing his wager. But none said a word. And I saw why when I blinked the last of the salt out of my eyes – to face the lightning in the eyes of the captain who stood before me on deck, white-faced and thin-lipped, completely heedless of the tropical rain that beat down upon all of us.

Any other privateer chief – any other captain of any other vessel – would have laid a blow across my face with that look to accompany it. But the only thing that left Captain Shear-Lock was a level, icy tone that expressed more fury than the roar of a dozen Navy captains. “That,” he said between his teeth, “Dr. Jack, is precisely why I demand that all my crewmen be able to swim. The men I choose for the _Baker_ cannot be as easily replaced as those jack-tars conscripted with a club and a cat. You would have been lost had not our bos’n been able to head overboard. A  drowning man thrashes as if the Devil has him; you’d have dragged a smaller man below with you.”

I looked across the deck again at that grim dark gaze. Not anger at me, but subsiding terror in those eyes. Angel, who hated entering the water because of the murderous crocodiles that had lurked in the rivers of his African childhood, had leaped overboard in this shark-infested sea to rescue me. “Mr. Angel,” I croaked, the salt water having made my throat raw. “I owe you my life.”

The bos’n shook his head and held up his right arm to show the long pink ridged scar where I had stitched him after a skirmish. “The hold is reballasted, Dr. Jack. It is what shipmates do.”

I nodded my understanding.

The captain’s steely voice cut through that exchange. “The best way you can show your appreciation for Mr. Angel’s deed, Dr. Jack, is to ensure that he need never repeat it again.” Shear-Lock fixed me with a look that was nearly as frightening as the one he turned on men he fought, for the same inexorable will was behind that gaze. “We reach our target soon, and then Tobago. Neither you, nor Mr. Murray, will leave Tobago without knowing how to swim.

“And, Jack – if you are ever again stupid enough to not have one hold at all times in the rigging, should you survive that I will give you the dozen myself.”

With a swirl of his long coat flinging an arc of rain like one of the sails, the captain retreated back into his cabin, leaving me blinking amid a circle of men, nearly naked in the rain and only just beginning to shiver from the realization of my near-miss as well as from the cold and wet. An ache filled my chest that had nothing to do with my near-drowning; I had made Shear-Lock furious with me as he had never been before.

Wiggins, nearly as white-faced as the captain had been, held out my saw-hand in both of his; I slipped it back onto my raw and bleeding stump by rote, as I had become accustomed to donning the limb upon rising for my watch, mute as the lad and numb.

Murray, bless him, gave me a thump on the shoulder once I’d finished rebuckling my limb. “There’s no avoiding this order any longer. It’s back into the water for us both, Jack,” he said ruefully.

“I’ve had enough water for now, Sailing Master,” I responded, and the deck exploded into relieved laughter. Now that they saw I was well enough to joke about my near-miss, the men scattered to their posts once again – dramatic rescue or not, the watch was the watch, and a jack-tar’s work was never done. Soon only Wiggins stayed stoutly by me through the sheeting rain.

I shook myself out of my self-pity and misery. Belowdecks was my locker, still at my rightful place with the carpenters though my hammock still hung in the captain’s cabin. A change into dry clothes – drier clothes, at least, since everything took on the damp in this weather, and oiled cloth only held off so much rain – and a dose of rum to chase the wet and cold from my bones, and then the logbook.

I gave my dogsbody a reassuring smile and headed to the hatch. “Wiggins, I’m afraid my hubris in the rigging has lost you your wager.”

“I didn’t though, Dr. Jack.” Grinning, Wiggins slapped his purse, which gave forth the unmistakeable ring of silver behind me on the stairs. “You got from the deck to the crow, and that was the wager. Mr Small din’t say nothing about getting back down without mishap. He said I was right and you’d got down right enough – if not elegant.”

I exploded into a much-needed belly-laugh as I made my way to the carpenters’ quarters. “Master Wiggins, you are wasted as a surgeon’s mate. You ought to go into the law.”

Wiggins scrunched up his face. “Don’t you got to read to be in the law?”

My second belly laugh was halted by an approaching smell – the earthy, intoxicating, heartwarming smell of good tea. Tea? We all drank grog, or the green scuttlebutt water, or Angelo’s black foul coffee when we took our meals. The only one aboard who drank tea was…

The appearance of Billy, holding a steaming can wrapped in a knotted cloth as he approached us, explained all. “For you, Dr. Jack,” he said. “Cap’n says near-drowning can foul your lungs without you gettin’ something hot to drink.”

My heart lifted from its sorrow at once. It would have been just as easy for Shear-Lock to send down a tin of Angelo’s coffee as this ambrosia from his private stock.

“Convey my thanks to the captain, Billy,” I said. I gripped the tin’s snug-bound cloth wrapping with my one hand and raised the steaming can to my lips. The cabin boy retreated to head back to his duties, and Wiggins waited for me to finish my libation before helping me dress.

I was still wet and cold, still worn from my ascent and shaken from my near-drowning. But more than the fragrant tea spread warmth through my body. He was angry at me for frightening him, but he had forgiven me.

_ Then I will make good on this pledge, Captain. I will not only learn to swim as you have ordered all your men, but I will swim once around the  _ Baker _– sharks or no sharks – before we put Tobago behind us._

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt I was given: “Dr Jack the reluctant swimmer: So what if he had a couple of swimming lessons during his early days on the Baker... that was when he still had two good arms to flap about with, and even then he was not a confident swimmer. Suddenly awash, a panicky swimmer becomes a potential drowning victim. (could be used as a sub-plot to other main stories).”


End file.
